Kevin
by sprocketwheel
Summary: A 100 theme challenge taken from Livejournal. Warning: Shameless Ryan propaganda. Fluff, angst, humour, action. Requests taken where possible.
1. Introductions

**Introductions.**

It strikes Castle, over three years into working with the man, that he and Detective Ryan were never formally introduced. Beckett, he remembers like it was yesterday, introduced herself in the form of a gate crash and the threat of handcuffs, and Esposito had made a point of coming up and shaking the hand of the man who'd managed to put his hitherto inscrutable boss so on edge. Kevin Ryan, however, had appeared at the edge of a conversation somewhere, read out some information from his notepad, and left again, and Castle had assumed - to his shame, he now feels - that he was going to be background noise from there on in.

But over the next couple of weeks Castle noticed, bit by bit, how important this little Irish paragon was to the team. Ryan edged into his vision to take a place right beside Beckett, Esposito, the Captain, Lanie: one day it was the way that Kate, when she thought everybody was too busy to notice, looked at him, the same way she looked at Javier - like a little brother she knew had outgrown the need for her berating or mollycoddling, but enjoyed watching over anyway, just in case. Another day it was walking into the bull pen and seeing Ryan laughing with a brilliant white grin that reached his ears at Esposito and Montgomery, finishing off an anecdote that made even the Cap join in with the fist bump. Days after that, Castle's eyes are barely keeping up with the scene in front of him as Ryan chases and tackles a suspect to the ground, spouting imaginative insults and conjuring handcuffs in one fell swoop, and he can't believe it's the same man as the silly, accommodating young cop he'd seen playing Koosh ball in the Precinct.

As he looks at the Detective now, grinning at Castle brightly as he reveals the discovery of a shortcut to the Old Haunt, he is glad that there is someone at the 12th who is a slow burner, someone who lets _you_ discover _them_ rather than walking right up to you and making their presence known. He wonders if their friendship, if this case - hell, any case - would have panned out quite the same if Kevin Ryan had been the kind of person that squared straight up and introduced himself.


	2. Love

A/N: Superthanks to Helainewarrior, Kerkerian-Horizon, LittleBiscuit and el spirito for your amazing reviews! I was not expecting such lovely words. And thank you too to everybody who faved. Hopefully you'll enjoy.

**Love.**

Jenny can not sleep.

She watches the man sleeping next to her, who only gave into his weariness 20 minutes ago, two hours before they're both meant to be getting up and leaving - and her heart crumples in her chest. She moves to touch his face, aching to feel his skin under her fingers, to trace his jaw line, to make sure he's really there and not a figment of her frantic imagination. But she stops herself, not wanting to wake him after it took him so long to get this tiny interval of rest. He is still pale, despite the innumerable extra blankets she'd piled on top of the bed to a soundtrack of variations on "Honey, really, I'm _fine_!", although she was told after he had been treated that it was probably now more due to shock than temperature.

But still. His pallor against the sheets frightens her. For the first time in their relationship she is glad she can't see the rest of him. Normally Jenny would take any chance she could to steal a glance at his body; to take in the shape of his chest through his shirt or the curve of his wrist as he holds the latest Nikki Heat novel; to map out the faint laughter lines on his face as she tells an anecdote about work that she knows isn't funny; to gobble up the sight of him. Tonight however, all she can think about is the bruises on his knees, almost black against his freezing skin and over his ribs where they'd held him over a-

_Stop it. _She somehow stops the onslaught of images terrorising her brain and takes a breath. He's here, he's alive. And _fine_, he says. So so is she. And so is Javier, which she is overwhelmingly grateful for because her fiancé wouldn't have got through tonight without him. "All I thought about was that I had to get him back to you," the Hispanic Detective had said after he had managed to stop her fretting about the marks around his neck. "I haven't had wedding cake in a while. I'm kind of counting on you guys for that."

Now Jenny fights to block out the noises of New York at dawn and closes her eyes, so that Kevin's soft breathing is the only sound in the world. She listens, marking out the rhythm in her head as if she's never heard it before, memorising it. She thinks to herself, in her weary, frightened madness, and although it has never occurred to her to hurt _anything _before, that if anyone else dares to take away this sound, if anyone tries to make her live without it, she will take back-up gun lying in the drawer, go out, and happily shoot them herself.


End file.
